Freecell has beaten me, I’m afraid (but also rather glad). In the Olden Days, when layouts were numbered, one could (cheat and) go online and learn the solution. No longer. I won’t give up and go on without cracking this one, but nibbling at its difficulties will become less and less attractive. I fear I'm cured.

I finished knitting a swatch for the Polliwog, devoted a good deal of mental energy to moving the disks on my Pony Knitting Calculator, and wound up with the solution with I had thought of in the first place, and which the designer – Mary Lou – endorses. Namely, knit the instructions for the largest size, hoping to achieve the smallest.

However, I don’t have a right-length circular of the necessary size; and I can’t find my pack of beautiful wooden dp’s which I had only a day or so ago, casting on some socks during a hospital visit. So the Polliwog will have to be suspended until I can order what I need from Meadow Yarns.

Shandy, my plan, as far as there can be said to be one, is to knit the Polliwog as a sort of palate-cleanser between courses, and then plunge into real life: Alexander’s Museum-Sweater-Vest with perhaps something else in alternation. Newspapers in this country often tell us how many days into the tax year we have to work before we are working for ourselves rather than the gov’t. I have much the same feeling at this moment, this year, knitting-wise – and it leaves me spinning around in my place.

However, today’s main excitement on the knitting front is completely other. I spend the first moments of the day hunched over the kitchen table, checking my emails (and your dear comments) and then, usually, moving on to the Times on-line. But today there was something in my “Promotions” folder which led me to click onto a Youtube podcast by Fruity Knitting.

Wow!

I have seen knitting podcasts before, and found them rather languorous. This one was a delightful, varied magazine program, Andrea and Andrew, both knitters. All the better because the episode I thus tumbled into included the EYF. A&A had lunch with Hazel Tindall on the Saturday, the day after I was there. The podcast included a brief view of her actually knitting. Her fingers scarcely move. Ah! but what a wonderland lies behind that “scarcely”!

How does it work? YouTube is free. There was no sign of any advertising. Do A&A do it for love of knitting, like my clumsy self?